Dungeon Danger levels

[Sradac]

i dont think everything should be with the players level, It would make sense for a hugely powerful barbarian to be able to find caves full of weak pathetic monsters. Re-setting the danger level on each entrance to someplace would just suck, it wouldnt make sense.

[Dorten]

I'd say - give all dungeons more or less random DL. Low level char, who goes to every hole in the dirt to see what's inside is stupid and deserves to find a master lich in one of them. On the other hand, the survival skill application to guess what lives in the cave is an awesome idea. Another thing would be local townsfolk telling your char where the local dragon lives (they feed him ten virgins each year, so a path to his lair is well known, or maybe he always attacks from the north, so he lives somewhere to the north, but they can't tell for sure).

Kinda make it more realistic (consideing dragons and liches are realistic at all )

[Dougy]

From here:

Well perhaps 'c'hatting with friendly NPCs could help reveal what is in dungeons nearby. "I'd wouldn't go in the dungeon to the east, nobody who entered there has ever come back alive." This way, there's a way to avoid walking into death-traps, but at the same time you don't always have to battle 10 levels of goblins before getting anywhere decent.

Those with the appraisal skill could get messages along the lines: "You feel like you don't belong here."

The appraisal is probably a better choice than the survival skill, since (a) survival is about gathering food in the wilderness and (b) appraisal has little value in ADOM.

[Dorten]

I always thought, that survival is about surviving... That includes finding food in the wilds. But appraisal is about the quality of item. Can't see how it fits here.

[Tannis]

I agree with Dorten. Not blundering into a Liche's lair and being skinned alive is pretty integral to surviving

[Worst Player... ever]

From here:The appraisal is probably a better choice than the survival skill, since (a) survival is about gathering food in the wilderness and (b) appraisal has little value in ADOM.

I guess the principle is the same no matter what is used. I had suggested survival because I see it as being able to detect tracks (hence monster types and levels) and other signs of recent occupation. Plus like Tannis said earlier, Survival is also a near useless skill and it needs all the help it can get.

I think TB could get rid of appraisal altogether, or make it so that it tells you everything but the status of the object, like an uncursed scroll of Identify. At least then it would give you the approximate worth of the object in question.

[moppit]

I like the message Idea too... "you hear the sounds of slowly shuffling feet"

Hey Thomas are you hard coding monster types in? or importing from a dat file, either way you could add two fields to the data, a monster_descriptor field and a relevant_skill field.. (I prefer importing from dat, but even hard coding it shouldn't be too hard, I would think.. (Don't ya love how everyone not programming jade says how stuff shouldn't be too hard.. heh)

Example

Monster // Monster_Descriptor // Relevant_Skill
Zombie // "You hear what sounds like slowly shuffling feet" // Listening
Orc // "You see orc tracks" // Awareness
Hurthling // "You notice small patches of well tended tubers" // Farming
Liche // "You notice the winds of magic swirling violently around" // Spellcraft

etc.. etc.. etc... Would be fun as a community also to figure out and note which descriptors relate to which skills

[Dougy]

Yeah, in any case, it seems like a good idea for the PC to find out in-game in some ways. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

[Nezur]

I always thought, that survival is about surviving... That includes finding food in the wilds. But appraisal is about the quality of item. Can't see how it fits here.

Considering survival as a skill seems to be a rather obscure concept, would it make sense to divide it into new skills? Foraging, fishing and tracking for example.

Tracking can be used for finding monsters' tracks () and drawing conclusions from them (the direction of the tracks, size of the enemy and sometimes species).

Foraging is used to find edible greenery from the nature. I don't actually know if this skill is really needed since the forest ground could be simply filled with various berries, mushrooms etc. so that the player could decide if he/she wants to try them out. [H]andling various trees may cause them to drop apples, rowan-berries, cherries, birds' nests and so on. Or just climb a tree for food.

Fishing reduces the time fishing takes (not really much, maybe this skill wouldn't be necessary either). Note that this skill could be used in the non-wilderness view. Just carve a fishing pole, find a cord, get a hook and a bait (an insect, a bit of raw meat, a worm from a rotten corpse etc.) and you're set.

I think there are a lot of ways to increase the uses of skills.

[Dougy]

Those skills seem quite reasonable to me. "You shake the tree, it falls on top of you. You die..." Blast! I'm doomed again.

I've never seen a monster come out of a dunegon though, how could it have left footprints outside? Perhaps it's different in JADE anyway.